Mosaic Graffiti Invades Barcelona!

The famous ‘space invader mosaic’ tag on the concert Palau in Barcelona

“Invader is a street artist who pastes up mosaic characters from and inspired by the Space Invaders game, made up of small coloured square tiles. He does this in cities across the world, then documents this as an “Invasion”, with maps of where to find each invader.”

“Space Invader is not your conventional graffiti artist. For one thing, he’s from Paris. For another, he works alone and doesn’t run with a crew. No spray paint, wheat-paste, or supersized Sharpie markers involved. This guy does mosaics — really beautiful, intricate tiles of video game icons (Toshiro Nishikado’s Space Invader, 1978) — and they’re hidden all over the world. In fact, 106 of them are right here in L.A.: Nine of them live on the letters of the Hollywood sign and 15 more are planned around town before he concludes his visit. Our city is also the subject of his second publication, Invasion Los Angeles, which serves as a hip tour book complete with action photos and locations.

Invader has been doing this for nearly 10 years now and 80 to 90 percent of his outdoor pieces are still intact, he says, “unless someone has taken a hammer to it — I use high-quality materials.” He has been arrested many times, but skirts trouble for the most part by playing it cool. His philosophy is that he’s “leaving a gift to the city,” and who’s to say he’s not? Each piece is as meticulously recorded and planned as it is created and re-creations called “Aliases” (encased in resin, etched with the time, date and location of the original) are included in his gallery shows.” excerpt from LA Weekly.